for Finn and Quinn (what could have been)
by youcanfallalongwayinsunlight
Summary: They're the golden couple, seemingly perfect in every way... except for the fact they're both hopelessly in love with Rachel Berry.
1. Prologue

She has straight A's and a prom queen smile. He's head quarterback and the most popular kid in school. They've been together for five months, two weeks, and four days, and they've never loved each other.

 _In fact, they're both in love with the same girl. Funny how life works out some times, isn't it?_

But she is scared, and he is not. So he gets the girl, and she (the one with the prom queen smile) goes off the rails. She runs for prom queen (and loses), so she resorts to drastic measures: pink hair, a nose ring, cigarette perpetually in hand.

Everyone notices. No one cares.

Except the girl.

 _Funny how life works out sometimes, isn't it?_

But then the quarterback and the girl ( **his girl** ) get engaged. And the girl with straight A's gets into Yale.

She's not excited, or proud, or really even happy.

She's never wanted anything less.


	2. On My Way

Time passes; life goes on.

She throws herself into everything (church choir, Glee club, school) to distract herself from the fact the quarterback and the girl are getting married. It kind of works.

" _We're kind of friends, huh?"_

Somewhere down the line, Dave Karosfky tries to kill himself, and while she feels horrible for him and his family, she can't help but try to stay distant, because it's really, really rude to be jealous of a suicidal boy.

(But she is. At least his father loves him. At least people accept him and are trying to understand him. At least he's honest about who he loves.)

So she remains distant, and no one's really phased by her attitude (no one's ever accused her of having a heart anyways.) But then Kurt Hummel gets offended by her distance and goes off on her, telling her that she has no idea what's it like to hate yourself for your sexuality, that having a baby isn't real pain compared to being gay.

She'd laugh if she had the energy.

So she acts like a bitch, and nobody defends her, and soon everyone seems to forget the fight even happened. She replays it in her mind over and over for the rest of the day.

Regionals comes. She dances in the background, sings in the background, and pretends to care when they win.

But then she sees the girl, and she realizes that this wedding is happening. The quarterback won, and there's nothing she can do. So she asks to attend the ceremony, because at least then she'll get to see the girl she loves in a wedding dress.

Fate has a different plan. She runs a stop sign. A truck crashes into her.

She's dying, and she can't help but laugh. She was right for being jealous of Dave.

She's never wanted to live less.


	3. Nationals

She doesn't die. The girl she loves isn't married.

She honestly doesn't know which one she's more excited about.

But now, for the first time in a while, she has something to work towards: walking again, dancing at Nationals, and a million other things, big and small, that she realizes she's always taken for granted.

High on morphine, laying in a hospital bed, she rambles on and on about things she loves, books and poems and obscure historical facts. Puck and Brittany laugh at her, while Santana rolls her eyes.

(The girl she loves comes in later and sobs when she starts her tirade, because she is alive, alive, alive.)

Time passes; life goes on.

She learns to walk again with the support of Joe, a good Christian boy (he's merely a distraction). On prom night, knowing she's won the crown she's always wanted, she thinks about the quarterback and the girl they both love, about how she ruined their wedding day, about how much she means to the girl she loves.

She gives up her crown, and the girl's face as she dances with the quarterback is radiant, but when she stands up, the girl looks at her like she is the sun, and she knows that she's won, even if not exactly in the way she wanted.

She keeps working, keeps walking, and starts dancing again. When she makes it through "Paradise by the Dashboard Light" one whole time without stopping, Artie grins and Mercedes cries and Mike twirls her around the room, his beaming smie as bright as the sun.

The girl hugs her, very solemnly, and that's the best congratulations of all.

They reach Chicago, and Mercedes gets sick, and suddenly she's being put into the "Edge of Glory" number. She starts to panic, because she's come so far from where she started but _what if I'm not good enough?_

Blaine gives her a warm, reassuring smile from across the rehearsal room, and Tina squeezes her shoulders in between run-throughs, and when everyone else goes to dinner and she stays behind to rehearse, Sam stays with her, watching her practice but not saying anything.

They win.

The quarterback (the boy she's hated for a long, long time) approaches her that night on the way back to the hotel, speaking quietly to her about how he'd like to be friends, how he's really proud of who she's become, and how his mom would love to have her over for dinner sometime because she is so, so much smarter than anyone else in Lima and Carole has a secret, inexplicable love for obscure poetry, just like her.

She says yes. They set a date.

The next morning, as the team boards the plane, Kurt elbows her gently and strikes up a conversation about the pros and cons of argyle skirts. She looks at him, mouth ajar, and he merely winks, squeezes her hand, and changes the topic to their shared physics class.

Kurt knows.

She's never been less afraid of someone knowing in her life.


	4. Graduation

It's two days before graduation when Puck corners her in between classes and asks if they can talk in private. She agrees, and shortly after, they're alone in an unused science classroom. He levels her with the saddest, most understanding gaze she's ever seen on his face, and asks if she's in love with the quarterback's girl.

She immediately bursts into tears, and he cradles her head as he hugs her tightly and promises her he won't tell anyone and that it'll all be okay.

She really, really wants to believe him.

When she's done crying, he stays where he is for a moment, praying silently that this girl – the one that _he_ loves – will be able to make peace with this part of her, that she'll learn to be happy, because all he's ever really wanted was for her to be happy, even if it wasn't with him.

Before he leaves, he suggests she makes sure that she finds a way to stay in touch with the girl, even if just as friends.

The next day, she presents the girl she loves with Metro passes. When the girl shows them off in Glee that afternoon, she doesn't notice the looks that Kurt, Puck, and Santana are shooting each other. Brittany and Mercedes do, though, and suddenly everything makes so much more sense than it did before.

(It takes everything Mercedes has not to start sobbing on the spot, because she feels like a horrible, horrible friend.)

(Brittany just sighs.)

When Mercedes approaches her almost shyly after practice and asks if she wants to come over to her place tomorrow morning to get ready, she accepts automatically, because she spent four years pushing all these amazing people away and it makes her sick to think about letting that trend continue.

It's graduation day, and everything looks brighter than it ever has before. Her name is called right after Mike's, and he gives her a fist bump when she sits down beside him, murmuring "I'm pissed that I'm second, but nobody deserves to be valedictorian more than you." She smiles at him, and he winks at her in response.

Puck and Finn start up a rendition of "Glory Days", and she spends most of it dancing with Santana, though Sam spins her around briefly, and she and Kurt bust out the steps from their "Time Warp" duet before she stumbles, giggling like she never has before, into Mercedes' waiting arms. They share a knowing grin before the song ends, and then it's time for her to give her speech.

She talks about books, and poetry, and how the only thing more powerful than words are actions. She ends the speech with a quote from _Harry Potter_ , and somewhere, her father is furious, but Lucy is thankful, and most of all proud.

She moves her tassel.

She's made it.

She's had four rough years, full of heartache and pain and suffering. Most days, she wanted nothing more than to get out of high school and never look back. But it's funny, she thinks.

Even with all the bad days, she's never wanted to be in Lima less.


	5. Thanksgiving

The first thing she notices about Yale: it's _hard._

The second thing?

 _It's so, so much fun._

She meets her roommate three days before classes start. Her name is Emily, and she's a loud, vibrant, redhead with a love for chemistry and a hatred of reality television.

They spend their first day at a coffeeshop next to a local bookstore, swapping book recommendations, favorite songs, and funny stories. A few hours after they arrive, another girl walks up to their table and asks if she can sit with them.

This girl is named Beth, and she wants to tell her to scram. But Yale is a fresh start, she reminds herself, a chance to be happy and kind and confident. So instead she smiles as genuinely as she can and pulls up a chair.

Beth, she comes to find out, is quiet and sweet and very, very smart, the smartest person she's ever met. Math is Beth's passion, and for some reason, that isn't surprising news at all. Beth walks and talks and breaths order, logic; she has long, curly brown hair, big brown eyes, and the most ridiculous Southern accent ever.

She tries to ignore the way her heart flutters every time Beth talks.

It doesn't work.

The first day of Yale, she walks into Intro to Theater class and takes a seat next to a boy dressed flamboyantly in a pair of tight skinny jeans and a sweater that can only be described as garish. He looks at her, grins, and introduces himself as Gabe. After she tells him her name, he immediately asks if she's a dancer. She tells him she used to be, and he immediately invites her to Dance Club. It's for all skill levels, he assures her, and she smiles briefly before saying that'd she'd love to.

Time passes; life goes on.

She goes to every class, because Yale is really, really expensive and she doesn't want to waste her mom's money. Besides, the pieces of Lucy that she was never able to destroy absolutely thrive, especially in history and literature.

Two weeks before Thanksgiving, she quietly switches her major from drama to history with a minor in comparative lit instead of business, and she's never been prouder of herself.

A day and a half later, she's tapped to join Yale's only all-female secret society, and to her, it feels like she's finally getting the chance to settle into her own skin, if only a little bit.

Buoyed by this thought, and knowing she will be heading home for Thanksgiving in about a week, she asks Beth out on a date.

Beth accepts with the brightest smile she's ever seen, and for some odd reason, it feels like hope.

Six days later, she's on a plane.

When she arrives at the airport, her mom greets her with a hug and a quiet _I missed you, baby_ , and Lima doesn't seem so bad at first. Of course, that sentiment doesn't last long. She gets to McKinley and takes a moment to just stand on the stage for a moment in complete silence, her eyes closed tight, remembering everything that had happened on this stage, and how much wiser she is for it.

Then she starts to sing.

That night, she tells her old friends (the quarterback, Mike, Mercedes, Puck, and Santana) that she and the girl she loves (used to love? she isn't sure) have only been in touch by email. This is not really a lie. She's sent the girl five emails since she arrived at Yale; the girl hasn't responded to any of them.

She tells herself that it doesn't mean anything. It's a lie, and she knows it.

Later, she tells Santana she's sleeping with her married professor, and they fight, and she's incredibly ashamed that all the progress she'd made at Yale seemingly went down the drain in an instant _. But that's the problem with this school_ , she thinks. _I_ _t makes everyone the very worst version of themselves._

That night, Blaine gives her a ride home, and when they're halfway there, he pulls over and sits silently for a minute before dissolving into wordless sobs.

They've never been close, but she knows better than anyone how horrible it is to cheat on someone, so she hugs him as he cries. They talk quietly the rest of the way home (about Kurt and Sam and the quarterback and all the other people the two of them have hurt in their attempts to protect themselves) and when he finally pulls into her driveway, she feels lighter, and after glancing at Blaine, she knows that he feels the same way.

She spends the next day with her mother and Santana and Brittany's family, and that night she and Mike and Mercedes go to the local ice cream parlor and talk about their relationships and when they ask her about who she's dating, she squeezes her eyes shut and says a silent prayer before saying the name.

When she opens her eyes, Mercedes looks thrilled and Mike looks knowing and so she keeps talking.

(Later that night, as they're getting ready to leave, he whispers that he and Matt put bets on her being gay by the second week of freshman year, and she throws her head back and laughs.)

When she crawls into bed, the last thing she does is send a text to the quarterback to let him know that she's proud of who he's become, and she hopes that he gets what she's trying to say.

He does.

She's never hated him less.


	6. Valentine's Day

Two weeks before Christmas, Beth breaks up with her.

It's no one's fault, not really; they just aren't compatible. Besides the striking resemblance to her old crush, Beth didn't really appeal to her that much; she was too precise, too orderly. Beth didn't sing because she didn't want to disturb anyone else in the dorm; her apartment is military-neat and rather sparse. Beth comes from a loving family, with a history teacher for a father and a divorce attorney for a mom; her older brother is a junior partner at a crisis management firm in D.C., and her little sister is a sophomore in high school who runs cross-country and track and is the captain of the debate team.

Beth is happy, and normal, and safe, which seems nice at first, but Beth doesn't understand the demons that her girlfriend grapples with and doesn't really care to try.

So they break up (in the same coffee shop where they first met) and an hour later, she calls Santana and sobs hysterically for quite a while, Santana listening and not saying a word.

Time passes; life goes on.

The rest of December passes in a blur of finals (which she aces) and a nasty bout of pneumonia that leaves her Yale-bound during Christmas. She spends two hours on the phone with her mother, and even longer Skyping Frannie, but that night she cries herself to sleep for the first time since high school.

January passes similarly, with new classes and a tutoring gig and no desire for romance. And she's fine. Happy even. She really does feel more at home in herself most days.

The days she doesn't?

Well, she ignores those, for as long as she can.

Then comes Valentine's Day.

She never liked weddings, and she never really thought that Mr. Schue and Ms. Pillsbury were good for each other at all, but winter has always been hard for her, and she really misses Santana and Brittany and Mercedes and Mike and Sam.

(The quarterback's girl pops into her head. She banishes those thoughts as quickly as possible.)

When she arrives at the wedding, she sits next to Santana. Santana is meaner than usual, no doubt because of Brittany and Sam wrapped around each other a few pews in front of them.

Heartbreak makes them both extra-bitchy. It's one of the many things they have in common.

Ms. Pillsbury leaves Mr. Schuster at the alter. She just sighs, because now Puck owes her twenty bucks. (It was the only bet she made that she hoped she would lose.)

But there's an open bar, and she has a fake I.D. and something dark and angry gnawing at the pit of her stomach. So she drinks. Santana joins her.

They're both ridiculously drunk when Santana drags her out on the dance floor just as the quarterback and his girl start singing, and something about the two of them singing a love song together makes that dark feeling settle again, so she doesn't resist.

That night, they race down the hotel hallway back to her room, singing and skipping and holding hands.

They have sex, and as they shudder around each other, Santana says Brittany's name and she says nothing at all.

The next morning, she wakes up before Santana, and she throws her clothes on quickly before leaving.

She knows she's gay; she's known for a very long time.

But that feeling is gnawing at her gut again, and it's only now that she can put a name on it.

It's rage, yes, but also… emptiness.

She embraces it. She's never wanted to be empty less.


	7. The Quarterback

She starts to spiral.

Her roommate is the first to notice that something is wrong; she's stopped eating, stopped talking almost entirely, and is generally _off._

Then, Gabe and Jess from her stats class and a couple other friends notice. When they try to bring it up to her, she brushes them off, saying that she's just stressed about schoolwork and that she's fine.

She's not fine. She hasn't talked to anyone from Glee since the wedding that wasn't, not even Santana or Brittany. Several people have reached out, concerned, but when she didn't respond to any of them, they all stopped trying. It reminds her of senior year, when Dave had tried to kill himself and she'd been bitchier than she had been since the Skanks; nobody had been concerned by her coldness, and they'd stopped caring now.

 _No one's ever accused her of having a heart anyways._

But she's surviving. Sure, she drinks more than she probably should, and goes on long runs without eating before or after, but her grades are flawless and she's always been exceptional at shutting people out.

Then Finn dies.

When she finds out (from Tina's Facebook page, of all things) that the quarterback has passed, she stills entirely, holding her breath and not blinking. All she can think is _not Finn. Please God, not Finn._

(Somewhere in the back of her mind, she realizes she hasn't thought of him as anything other than "the quarterback" since sophomore year, and this thought makes her want to vomit.)

Three hours later, Emily finds her in the exact same place, staring blankly at the screen. When Em sees the Facebook post, her eyes widen in understanding, and she squeezes her shoulders before stepping back out of the dorm.

Time has frozen, just like her. All she can think about is Finn, how much she loved him, and how much she hated him at the same time. He wasn't a very good person most of the time, and he certainly wasn't the golden boy people always made him out to be. He was indeed a boy, but one who had always been a little too prideful for his own good. He wasn't very smart; he'd barely graduated high school, and his common sense wasn't much better (after all, he'd told her parents she was pregnant by _singing to them_ ). He had a horrible temper, one that had hurt both him and the people around him many, many times. He was endearing, maybe, and attractive enough, but still.

Despite all that, though, he was the boy who'd gone to every one of her cheer competitions that he could freshman year, and watched the ones far away from home on ESPN every time. He was the boy who'd tried (and failed) to cook her dinner on their second date; they'd ended up driving to a burger joint almost an hour away, and she'd laughed the entire way there. He was the boy who snuck her a lollipop every day in Glee after she got pregnant, even after he'd found out that Drizzle-Beth wasn't his.

He wasn't a good person, but he wasn't a bad person either. She'd loved him, but she'd never been in love with him. Everything about the two of them was grey, and she suddenly felt like drowning.

She didn't go to the funeral.

She'd tried, she really had. She got on the plane and flew to Lima and stayed in her childhood bedroom. She even had her dress picked out (it was red, because she always wore red to funerals and it had been Finn's favorite on her).

The morning of, she'd woken up, stared at that dress, and started sobbing.

She didn't stop for days.

Two days after she'd arrived, she left again. She hadn't gone to the funeral. She wasn't going to the memorial week. The Glee Club might be angry at her absence, but they all thought she was a bitch anyways, so it didn't really matter anymore.

Time passes; life kind of goes on.

With a little time, she locks away her grief, instead throwing herself into school more than she ever has before. There are still bad days, of course, days where she forgets to eat and doesn't talk and pulls out the packs of cigarettes she keeps stashed under her bras, but those have nothing to do with Finn, and everything to do with the girl that he loved to his dying day.

(She can say his name, but she can't say hers. What a joke.)

By the time the end of the semester rolls around, she is in contact with exactly two people from Glee – Brittany and, surprisingly, Kurt.

She's staying in New Haven for the summer, and Kurt knows this, so on her moving day, he shows up in Finn's old pickup truck, Brittany and Blaine in tow, and together, the four of them take her things from her dorm and move them into her apartment fifteen minutes away.

When they're done, Blaine pulls a bottle of wine from the glove box of the truck, and they drink on the floor of her new home, surrounded by the boxed-up pieces of her life.

As they steadily make their way through the bottle, they begin talking about (of course) Finn, and despite the fact that she and Brittany were both absent from the service, that fact doesn't come up.

Suddenly, the topic changes from Finn to his ex-girlfriend, and without warning, Kurt looks at her and says the three words that will change her life.

Let her go.

Caught off guard, she sputters, unsure of how she's supposed to react. They all know that she's gay, but her crush on the girl in question… nobody was ever supposed to know.

Kurt smiles at her sadly, and informs her that the girl she loves is very straight and very unavailable, she can't help but laugh, because _duh, Hummel._

It's Brittany, of course, who makes it all make sense.

 _If you want to get over her, you need to admit that there's something to get over first._

Blaine nods encouragingly, and at that, she downs the rest of her wine, takes a deep breath, and announces to the room, "I, Quinn Fabray, have been in love with Rachel Berry since the first day we met." It's the first time she's said it out loud.

Her friends cheer drunkenly, and she can't help but join in. It almost seems like saying it made it less real.

She's never loved Rachel less.


	8. Epilogue

_New York City, Five Years Later_

Quinn walked through the door of her apartment, hanging her black peacoat on the wall hook next to her keys. Grabbing the pile of mail from the entryway table, she wandered down the hall and into the kitchen.

"You home, Q?"

"In the kitchen!"

Turning towards the fridge, Quinn grabbed a bottle of Vitamin Water and spun around, grinning widely when her fiancée entered the room.

"Hey baby," Quinn said huskily, hugging Spencer tightly. It had been a very long, exhausting day at work, and Spence's hugs were (in Quinn's opinion) magical.

"Did you grab the mail?"  
"Sure did!"

At Quinn's conformation, Spencer grabbed the pile eagerly, shooting Quinn a playful glare when she giggled at her enthusiasm.

"Let's see… we've got the electric bill… a furniture ad… the hospital newsletter for me… and a letter for you!"

With a furrow of her brow, Quinn took the indicated envelope. Tearing it open carefully, Quinn withdrew a single sheet of thick white paper. Flipping it over, she studied it carefully.

 _You are cordially invited to the wedding of_

 _Rachel Barbara Berry_

 _and_

 _Jesse Stephen St. James_

At the bottom of the invitation, there was a handwritten note, clearly written by Rachel herself.

 _Quinn,_

 _I know it's been quite a while since we last saw each other, and I'd like to apologize for that. After getting the part of Fanny Brice, I let most of my friendships fall by the wayside, and following my failed television production, I threw myself back into Broadway so vehemently that I completely ignored you for several years. There are lots of things that I want to say, so please check your old high school email. I've sent a message explaining everything._

 _R.B.B._

Shaking her head slightly (after all these years, Rachel was as verbose as ever), Quinn pulled her laptop out of her work bag, logging into her old email address with shaking fingers. There were three unread emails, but two of them were from Brittany and dated several years ago, no doubt a result of Britt forgetting that she had changed emails. Biting her lip, Quinn clicked on the most recent message, sent two days previously.

 _Hello Quinn._

 _I first wanted to say congratulations! I saw your poetry anthology in Barnes & Noble about a month ago; I bought it immediately, then sat down and read the whole thing in one sitting. It was absolutely spectacular, and while I know almost nothing about poetry or literary theory, I can tell that you have a rare and incredible talent. I will certainly be recommending your book to everyone I meet, and I can't wait to read your next work._

 _Secondly, when I heard that you had gotten engaged, I was a bit upset to discover that I had been left off the invite list for the engagement party. I almost called you, just to give you a piece of my mind, but as I was about to dial the number, Santana sat me down and explained everything. I was very surprised to hear that you once had a crush on me, and even more shocked to discover that it was much more than just a crush. I feel like I need to apologize, both for not realizing what you were struggling with and for leading you on throughout high school. Looking back, I said and did many things that probably made you think that our attraction was mutual, and I'm terribly sorry that I ever made you feel that way. While you are a very pretty girl (even now, the prettiest girl I've ever met), I never felt anything towards you other than friendship. I hope you can forgive me for any of my actions that hurt you as a result of my naivetity._

 _Finally, I would like to emplore you to attend my wedding. I understand why you might have reservations about it, but if I'm being honest, I miss you, Quinn. By the time senior year came around, I considered you one of my closest friends, and I would like to rekindle our friendship if you're willing to do so. If you do decide to come, please bring Spencer as well; Santana and Brittany have nothing but good things to say about her, and I know the rest of Glee is equally curious._

 _I'm glad you're doing so well, Quinn. You really do deserve all the happiness in the world, even if you never really believed that you did. If you do decide to come to the wedding, please text me and let me know as soon as possible, as I think I owe you a second chance to be one of my bridesmaids._

 _All My Love,_

 _Rachel Berry_

"What are you reading, Q?"

Quinn sighed slightly before turning around to face Spencer. "An email. From none other than Rachel Berry."

Spencer raised an eyebrow, a mannerism she'd picked up from Quinn. "After all these years? What's she up to?"

"You remember the stories I told you about Jesse St. James?"

"The one who made breakfast on her head?"

Chuckling quietly, Quinn replied, "He and Rachel are getting married."

"Really? From all you've told me about those two, that doesn't seem like a very good idea at all."

"Well, regardless of whether or not it'll work out long-term, Rachel wants us to come to the ceremony. In fact, she asked me to be a bridesmaid."

Spencer smiled softly before asking, "What do you want to do?"

Quinn bit her lip, thinking hard.

"…Quinn?"

Startled from her thoughts, Quinn said, "What?"  
"You zoned out for like, five minutes. I asked if you wanted to go to Rachel's wedding."

"I… don't know. On the one hand, she and I were kind of friends at one point, and all my old friends from Lima will probably be there too. It'd be wonderful to see them again. But on the other hand, I was in love with her for almost six years, which would probably make the whole thing incredibly awkward."

Spencer smiled at her. "So basically, you have absolutely no idea what to do."

"Yeah. That's about where I am right now."

"Well, it's a good thing you don't have to worry about it right now. Why don't you sleep on it? If you're still unsure tomorrow, call Kurt or Mercedes or something. They'll help you decide."

Quinn looked at Spencer thankfully. "How are you so smart?"

"It's just a gift, I suppose," Spencer said with a cheeky grin.

"I'm really lucky to have you, aren't I?"

"No," Spencer replied seriously, "I'm the lucky one."

It was funny, Quinn thought to herself, how life worked out sometimes. Standing in her apartment kitchen, with her arms around her fiancée and a cat meandering around their feet, Quinn had never been more at peace. She thought about the years of struggling, of pain and anger, and all the people she'd hurt. Somehow, despite the odds, she'd ended up here.

She'd never wanted anything more than this. She wouldn't have survived with anything less.


End file.
